No, you can’t eat them!

At last!  The Monarch Wings are installed in the Garland Community Garden.  Yesterday, October 1, Charlie and I installed them.  It seemed forever to finish them although I will say these wings were a lot easier to execute than the 8-foot-tall Garden Wings installation in 2018-- the painting (which I did for both sets) and the construction and installation which Charlie mostly did with a little help from me. The Garden Wings held up well, lasting two years outdoors.  One of the difficulties with the Garden Wings was that they were original.  I had to design and think of all organic elements I wanted to paint on them.  Mother Nature has already told me what Monarch wings look like so I didn’t have to think about design.  All I had to do was copy Mother Nature as exactly as my limited artistic skills would allow me.

A few days ago, the leader for a Daisy Girl Scout troop stopped in when I was working in the garden.  Just before the COVID-19 pandemic, they were going to do an installation of painted rocks in our Children’s Garden area.  Now, today (Oct 2) they will install it, of course with different Daisies because pandemic or not, kids continue to march toward adulthood. I look forward to seeing what they do.  I hope they take advantage of our new Monarch wings.

Speaking of good things in our community, Charlie and I decided to wear our Good Samaritan’s volunteer shirts when posing for our wings photos to help advertise the good work they do.  Charlie and I volunteer there.  On Monday afternoons at 3PM I come and help fill boxes with nonperishable grocery items for the next day.  On Wednesdays at 1:30PM Charlie and I come after a truck makes a delivery and we unload a pallet of gallon milk and put it in the Good Sam refrigerators.  It’s a great feeling we always have on our way home from there--like we did just a little bit to make the world a better place.  I highly recommend community service.  It’s at least as good for us than the people who benefit from our work.  Call Pam Swendig, executive director at Good Sam’s of Garland and ask her what you can do.

We felt like it was also appropriate for us to wear our t-shirts for these photos because Loving Garland Green, official stewards of the Garland Community Garden, donate 50% of all the produce from the garden to Good Samaritans of Garland.